Olivier played the title role in a film of Othello in which they painted him black, stuffed up his butt, and had him walk in a manner somebody must have told him looked black.
Interestingly, a theme of the play is the racism of the whites around him, including Desdemona's father, and how the sense of social isolation it produces in him makes him all the more vulnerable to Iago's campaign to make him believe Desdemona has been unfaithful.
Olivier's Mahdi in Khartoum was of the same ilk.
Of course, he was brilliant in both.
I was advised ages ago that in Japanese theater if a Japanese actor played a white character he commonly did it in whiteface.
Theatrical conventions just are what they are.
The PC police who denounce these conventions as racist are the same sort of folks who not long ago denounced a white girl for "cultural appropriation" and racism, both, for wearing a beautiful dress of a traditional Chinese type.
Paul Simon got the same treatment for some of the cuts on Graceland.
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